Even with the bar being quite low, Nairobi City County Members of Parliament have failed a leadership test to integrate Environmental Sustainability Governance into constituency development projects, according to a report being released in bits by Clean Up Kenya.
Nairobi City County constituencies received over 8 billion Kenya Shillings through the National Government Constituency Development Fund (NG-CDF) from 2017 to 2022, with 1.3 percent of this being utilized on environmental development activities, which is way below the 2 percent provided for by the law.
Some of the constituencies that received this money have not published financial reports in the last five years including Embakasi South, Kamukunji, Embakasi North, Starehe, Embakasi Central, and Dagoretti South. Makadara has published only for one year. While it’s not clear why these constituencies have not published financial statements, it’s possible it’s because of ongoing audit queries.
This report thus concludes that Members of Parliament in Nairobi City County on the basis of available data from ten constituencies have failed the Environmental Sustainability Governance test with Westlands and Kasarani being ranked the worst constituencies.
Embakasi East Constituency led by Hon. Babu Owino is the only constituency that surpassed the 2 percent minimal provision.
Some constituencies like Kibra had questionable environmental projects which include planting trees in the same schools year after year, this is despite the same schools also receiving seedlings from other organizations over the last few years. These tree-planting projects will thus need to be properly investigated.
The reports on other counties will continue to be available here with the final scorecard set to be released before August 2022.
ABOUT CLEAN UP KENYA
Clean Up Kenya was established in 2015 to advocate for and promote sustainable public sanitation in Kenya. Since then we have become the de-facto national public sanitation advocacy brand. We are also experts in community mobilizing for cleanups. We have done numerous cleanups over the years, some of which have been attended by over 1000 volunteers on singular sites. These cleanups are meant to increase visibility on the problem of waste and it is therefore common to see our volunteers in bibs with one message, ‘Clean Up Kenya’. At the core of our work is honest and actual engagement in communities – not PR events. We also run advocacy campaigns holding duty bodies, consumer brands, green-washing NGOs, and other stakeholders to account for unsustainable public sanitation in Kenya and the global South. We receive no funding for our work but collaborate with others on projects.
